This blog is a campaign against Turkish accession to the European Union. Through original articles, and links to relevant sources of information, it aims to demonstrate why Turkish EU membership would be a disaster for Europe and for Western civilisation.

Thursday, 10 November 2011

Turkish Association Made Bizarre Claims About Christian Symbols Embedded in the Design of Cologne Mosque

The Cologne mosque has always been controversial. While it was till at the planning stage, it inspired the anti-mosque, anti-Islam Pro-Cologne movement which later blossomed nationwide as the Pro-Deutschland movement, one of the main Counterjihad movements and political parties in Germany.

Now that much of the mosque has been built, it is still generating controversy. A few weeks ago the Turkish association (DITIB) behind the mosque construction dismissed the company responsible for designing and building it, on the grounds of time and cost overruns and failures in the design.

The architect, Paul Böhm, is now hitting back, claiming that the time and cost overruns were due to DITIB continually insisting on changes in the design. Bizarrely, it seems many of these changes were due to DITIB's belief that the architect had embedded secret Christian symbols in the original plans.

DITIB claimed the three-part dome was a reference to the Christian concept of the Trinity. So Böhm changed it to a four-part dome instead. After extensive computer graphics processing, DITIB claimed this was a cross. So he changed it again.

Next DITIB claimed to have found an interwoven P and X symbol in the blueprints. This is a Christian symbol, the Chi Ro, constituting the first letters of Christ's name in Greek. Of course this was entirely imaginary, but the architects were constantly having to adapt the design in response to nonsensical claims like this.

Böhm ultimately blames the Turkish government for the dispute. DITIB is controlled by the Turkish government and the analysis behind the claims of Christian symbolism was apparently done in Turkey itself. Böhm claims DITIB has become increasingly conservative in recent years in keeping with the politics of Ankara. He also says he chose to keep quiet about all of these strange goings-on before so as not to provide fodder for "right-wing populists".

Billed originally as a symbol of "open and transparent" Islam, the mosque has instead become the exact opposite.